My father grimaced. “No. But Sal, we don’t know enough to know what’s happening. Most of the people who get sick don’t turn violent. We don’t want people to start turning on their family members because they’re frightened—and this is already a terrifying illness. People you know and love seem to disappear before your eyes. It would be irresponsible of us to make that even more frightening.”
“So you’re just going to say nothing, and let people like Devi keep getting hurt?”
“We’re not suppressing any information. I’m sure the news will pick this up and start telling the world very soon, if they haven’t done so already. But we’re not going to make any official statements until we know more than we know right now.” He stood. “It’s a horrible solution. There are no good solutions left.”
“Dad—”
My father paused in the process of leaving the room. He looked back over his shoulder at me and said, quietly, “You know, Sal, I’m very glad I’ve had the chance to know you. You’re a good person, and you still surprise me.”
I blinked at him, not sure what I could say to that. He took advantage of my brief silence and made his escape. I stared after him. Finally, I turned to Beverly, and asked, “Any thoughts?”
She wagged her tail.
Eventually, I got up and closed my bedroom door, and sometime after that, I managed to fall asleep. Sleep didn’t come easily, and once I found it, my dreams were full of darkness. Darkness, and the drums.
I knew I was alone in the house as soon as I opened my eyes. There was a quality to the silence that spoke of emptiness, not stillness. Even Beverly was gone, although that might just mean that she was out in the backyard rather than warming my feet. I rolled over and squinted at the clock. It was almost ten. No wonder I was by myself. Everyone with a more respectable job had long since taken off.
The stillness endured while I rolled out of bed and found my robe. I went padding out into the hall and toward the kitchen. Maybe there would be some leftovers from the previous day’s SymboGen-sponsored breakfast. It hadn’t poisoned any of us the day before. It wasn’t going to poison me now.
The sliding glass door to the backyard was open, and there was a note on the fridge, where I would be sure to see it. It was held in place with a magnet shaped like a slice of watermelon, and was written in my mother’s characteristically careful print:
Sal—
Your father told me what happened. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I hope you managed to get enough sleep, and that you’re feeling better today. Please just leave a note if you need to go and be with Nathan today. We’ll understand.
Beverly is in the backyard, and I made sure that we left you some of yesterday’s goodies for your breakfast. You have to remember to eat. Your implant needs food as much as you do.
Feel better, and call if there’s anything that you need.
I smiled as I finished puzzling through the note. Then I took it off the fridge, folded it, and placed it in my pocket. It was good to know that I had family on my side, no matter what else might be going on in the world.
Devi had thought she had family on her side, too. My smile faded. I got the remains of the scrambled eggs and sliced fruit from the day before, put them on a plate, and sat down at the breakfast table to eat. I barely tasted anything. I kept thinking of Devi’s face when she saw me coming into the office, the way she laughed, the way she always knew exactly what to say…
The way she talked about her bulldog, Minneapolis, who was probably sitting at home alone and confused, wondering when her people were going to be coming back to get her. The mouthful of eggs I’d been in the process of chewing suddenly tasted like ashes. I forced myself to swallow, putting my fork down on the plate. I was done. I couldn’t eat anything else, or I was going to be sick. Even if my implant still needed food, I just couldn’t.
Sometimes people who don’t want to think about what their implants really are—living, independent organisms that just happen to be genetically tailored to live inside the human body—will let themselves neglect the nutritional needs of their implants, and that can be bad. There are implants specifically designed to need less in the way of caloric support, but they’re limited in their distribution to places with bad famines and poor ongoing medical treatment. Low-calorie implants don’t do as much, so they’re reserved for places that can’t support anything else.
I put my plate down on the floor and whistled. The expected black Lab didn’t appear. I frowned and called, “Beverly! Food!” She still didn’t appear.
That wasn’t normal. It was strange to get through a meal without a black shadow appearing at my heels to ask for her share. It was unheard of for her to actually ignore food when it was offered.
“Beverly?” I started toward the back door, tugging my robe a little tighter. It was hard to keep from playing out nightmare scenarios. Like maybe she’d managed to dig a hole under the fence and was running loose somewhere, looking for the way home. But how would she know where home was? Would she run for the house where she used to live, the one where no one was waiting to let her in? I knew my concern for Devi’s dog was feeding my fear for my own. That didn’t make the fear any less real.
“Beverly!” I stepped onto the back porch, and stopped, frowning.
Beverly was still in the yard. That was a momentary relief. But she was standing next to the side gate, stiff- legged, ears pushed all the way forward, and the hair on her spine was standing up. Her tail was tucked low. She looked like a dog that was getting ready to charge into battle against a much larger enemy, and even though she knew she was going to lose, she was going to do it anyway. It was her duty.
“Beverly, come,” I called. She didn’t come. It was the first time she’d ever refused a command. I started down the steps to the lawn, still holding my bathrobe tight around my chest. We don’t have many dangerous animals in Colma, but rattlesnakes weren’t outside the realm of possibility. If Beverly had somehow managed to corner a snake, I wanted to pull her away from there as fast as I could.
As I got closer, I realized that she was growling, a low, deep sound that seemed to start in her paws and work its way all the way up through her body before rumbling past her lips. It was the sort of thing that would have been terrifying if she’d been directing it at me. Since she was directing it at the fence, it was scary in a different way. I sped up, trying to see what was in front of her.
There was nothing there but grass. Whatever she was growling at was on the other side of the fence.
“Beverly?”
She didn’t respond. I stepped forward and let go of my robe in order to lean down and take hold of her collar. She kept growling. Whatever she was growling at didn’t make a sound.
“Come on, Beverly. Let’s go inside.” I tugged on her collar. She dug her feet into the soil and held fast, refusing to be moved. I pulled harder. She still didn’t budge. It was like I was trying to move a concrete statue instead of a dog—only concrete doesn’t usually growl. “Beverly, come on!”
She turned to look at me for the first time since I’d joined her in the backyard. It wasn’t a full turn, just enough for her to see me out of one eye. Her expression was strangely pleading, filled with the anxious need of a good dog to protect her person. If she’d been human, I would have interpreted that look as “let me do this, let me have my job.” I let go of her collar, stepping away. Beverly’s head promptly snapped back into its original position, all her attention fixing on the fence. She never stopped growling.
I wasn’t a stupid actress in a horror movie, despite the fact that I had gone running outside in my bathrobe to see what was wrong with the dog; no matter how much I wanted to know what she was growling at, I wasn’t going to open the gate and find out. But there were other ways. Feeling suddenly very exposed, I turned and ran for the back door. I didn’t shut it—Beverly would need a way back into the house—but I still felt better once there was a wall between me and whatever had my dog so upset.
I wanted to call the police, but I needed a better reason than “something upset my dog.” I swallowed hard, and started for the living room. There was a window there that would give me a perfect view of the side yard, and the gate. I’d be able to see whatever it was that Beverly was growling at. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I was
